By accident or by design, Growl is most likely installed on your machine; if it isn’t, you should probably look into it. Many applications offer support for it and some even come bundled with it. Growl is one of those applications that one thinks should be native to OS X, but sadly, it isn’t. Though as Mountain Lion rolls out its own notification system, the future of Growl seems to be precarious. We’re still huge fans though and thought you’d enjoy a nice big dose of Growl goodness.

Here we have a group of sexy, sleek, and shiny Growl themes ready for you to download, install, and use at your discretion. At the bottom of the article, there are a few extra Growl notification styles that have not been coded. You can use these as inspiration. If you keep an eye on them, the designers may end up coding them.

And here we are again, with another installment in the iMovie ’11 video tutorial series. Today we look at iMovie’s themes. Themes are a unique part of iMovie that really let you take your home movies to the next level. But there are a couple of tricks to be aware of when trying to make use of them yourself.

Apple’s presentation application, Keynote, raises the bar in terms of usability and design for anyone giving a talk or presentation. It comes bundled with remarkably well designed themes, and stunning animations to move between slides.

Today we’ll be delving a little deeper into Keynote, offering various tips for getting the most out of the application. We’ll take a look at a few companion apps, investigate how to create your own theme, highlight a few great websites for gaining presentation inspiration, and showcase a handful of really gorgeous Keynote themes that you can download and use.

Changing the theme of your Mac allows you to completely alter the look and feel of the interface. We posted an overview of the two main applications able to deal with themes earlier this week; ShapeShifter, which is best for pre-Leopard systems, and Magnifique, which is Leopard compatible.

Once you’ve settled on an application to try, you’ll need to find a few beautiful themes to apply. Fortunately, we’ve gone away and researched 10 stunning examples for each application, so whether you’re running ShapeShifter or Magnifique you’ll be spoiled for theme-ing choice!

It’s widely accepted that OS X is already a very well designed operating system, with a great deal of attention paid to window appearance and icon design. It was the simplicity of design which inspired me to purchase my first Mac, and since then I’ve been fascinated with tweaking and modifying the interface.

Up until the release of Leopard, the most popular tool for modifying your Mac’s “theme” was ShapeShifter. Unfortunately, this doesn’t yet support OS X Leopard, and it’s looking unlikely that it will be updated in the near future. Another tool to consider is Magnifique, which brings a completely new theming engine (and Leopard support) to the table.

This how-to will provide a brief overview of how each of these apps work and what they can be used for. If you like the idea of changing the look and feel of OS X, keep your eyes peeled for a roundup of different themes coming later this week (both for ShapeShifter and Magnifique).